Sixpence & Whiskey

by Heather R. Blair

  “There used to be, long ago. Since they disappeared, no other creature has gained mastery over enough magical elements to be worthy of any of the other titles.”

  “My sisters have been around a long time. None of them wield elemental magic, Jack. And no one is going after them. Why the sudden interest in me? I can guarantee you, if any of us are going to be Queens of elemental magic, I’ll be the last, and the weakest.”

  He takes a breath. “Actually, Seph, there are clear indicators you’ll be the strongest.”

  “Stronger than Jett?” I raise an eyebrow. “Are you out of your mind? What are these so-called indicators?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” He runs a hand over his left forearm as he says it, not looking at me. I frown.

  “Why are you telling me this at all?” Why aren’t you hog-tying me and delivering me to your Dark Council buddies?

  “I shouldn’t be, but I wanted you to know Carly and Sy have a chance, Seph.” I must be hearing things, because I could swear it’s reassurance he’s going for. And I can’t afford to let Jack reassure me. “The wolves want you. They want to turn you over for the bounty. After what Owen said the other night, I’m sure of it. He’s when I started to suspect the others had been up to something.”

  “Well, a heads up would’ve been nice before now, genius.”

  “I’m not nice, Seph. Remember?”

  That night in the icehouse drifts into my head at his words. “I remember a lot of things that don’t make any sense. Who the fuck are you really, Jack Frost?”

  He shakes his head, giving me the same sidelong look he did in my office the other day. The way he looked after he kissed me, like he was on the verge of saying something enlightening, but once again, he doesn’t. “You really don’t want me to answer that, princess.”

  I’m so fucking confused my head is threatening to explode. Jack helped me with the wolves, he’s helping me now, or pretending to. He did his damnedest to get back in my pants last night, the memory of which even now makes me squirm.

  But with every other breath he also reminds me how dangerous it is to trust him. As if I ever could again. “How would you know?” I ask bitterly, “Have you ever told me the truth, even once?”

  He hits the brake so fast, the seat belt snaps tight around me, taking my breath away. Before I can get it back, Jack has a hand around the back of my neck, leaning over me, his eyes so bright they burn.

  “Here’s a truth for you, princess. Don’t believe what I fucking say, believe what I do. No matter what happens, you’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”

  Then he’s kissing me. Hard, viciously, crushing my mouth to his. Not a sweet kiss, or a seductive one. A kiss that burns like cold fire, searing my lungs and branding my heart. I thought Jack was proving something before, but now it occurs to me, he’s never had anything to prove. I am his.

  It shakes me to my core, and I’m gasping when Jack pulls away. He starts driving again, like nothing happened, but his knuckles on the steering wheel are white.

  For a long time, I’m too rattled to say a goddamn word, but as I realize we’re closing in on the Den, I make myself focus. Not on what just happened between us, but on what we’re facing up ahead.

  “So,” I mumble, looking out into the darkness, seeing his reflection behind me. “You’re telling me people I care about are in danger because of some half-baked rumor about me and my sisters being magical Queens. It sounds like a crock. Silly fairy-tale stuff.” I almost prefer the apocalypse version to Jack’s story.

  Jack gives me a look, because, duh, he is a creature from a fairy-tale. Even if they never exactly got him right. As a witch, so am I, but still…

  “You don’t believe it?” he says quietly.

  I shrug, my lips still buzzing from that kiss, watching the quiet white landscape dotted with deep green swirling past the windows in a mesmerizing blur. Time seems to be rushing forward in leaps and bounds. It’s going to be full-on dark soon; the sky is turning purple. The moon hasn’t risen yet. But it will, and that will give an advantage to the wolves, who already have numbers on their side. My sigh fogs the glass. “It just seem so…unlikely. Why the hell do witches need elemental magic anyway? We’ve got our own, and while it may not be as kick-ass as yours, it does the job.”

  Jack is shaking his head. “Your naivety is showing. There are always those who think that one power is never enough.”

  Like you, Jack? I wonder, thinking of what he did to me, and how it makes oh-so-much sense now.

  Luna was right, my Mom was right, Jack was hedging his bets, even back then. He’d heard this story from his Dark Council cronies, and he wanted to be ready for it. So he fucked me and worked his bit of nasty magic all to cover his own ass in case I really did turn about to be some sort of master witch. Excuse me, Queen.

  Something inside me breaks at the mercenariness of it all. But all I say out loud is, “That doesn’t mean I am one of them. I’ve no desire to be the queen of anything, Jack. Ask Georg.”

  Speaking of the bruin king, I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll for Georg’s contact info, ignoring Jack’s sharp look.

  He mumbles something under his breath, but I’m not really paying attention. I don’t think I can handle anything else from Jack right now anyway.

  I never have good cell coverage on the South Shore, no one does, but being a witch has its perks. I tap the phone, whispering a snippet of my rhyme. A snippet is all that is needed. Instantly my phone shows five solid circles. We’re in business. I call Georg again. And again.

  After half a dozen more times, I get the point. Magic can give me coverage, but it can’t make the stubborn bruin pick up.

  “He’s ignoring me.”

  “Where’s the boundary?”

  “We have to be close….”

  “I’d say we are.” Jack gives a short nod in the direction of his window, and I see it. The enormous grizzly pacing us, just a flash of gold and brown behind the black trees. Guess I know why Georg didn’t pick up. Hard to use a phone with bear claws.

  “Stop the damn car.”

  “What are you doing here?” Georg steps from the trees as soon as we emerge from the car, shifting from a huge, angry beast to a huge, pissed-off man between one step and the next.

  Despite the foot of snow on the ground and the frigid November air, Georg has on jeans and nothing else. His open, handsome face is as stiff with fury as I’ve ever seen it. But I’m not in the mood to coddle his ego. I step forward, my chin coming up, only to have Jack curl one hand around the back of my neck, pulling me back from the furious bruin.

  “You,” he spits in Jack’s direction, “have sworn not to come on my lands.”

  “True enough.” Jack gives a thin smile. My eyes dart from one man to the other, not sure what to make of this. “But you’re going to give me a dispensation, as this is a special case. Where are the wolves, Kivistö?” Jack’s voice is hard.

  Georg shrugs, heading back into the woods. “I don’t give a shit. Get off my land. They have a goddamn ‘dispensation,’ but you don’t. Either of you.”

  “They took Syana, Georg!” I can’t help it, my voice breaks as I watch him go. “And …Carly.”

  The bruin’s massive back goes taut. He whirls, his face paling under that perpetual golden tan. His brown eyes flicker from me to Jack and back. His voice cracks. “I didn’t know, Seph. Luna asked for safe passage through our lands to make a run up to Michigan. She said she was only doing it to avoid a confrontation with you.”

  “And you believed her?” Jack’s voice is cold.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I?” Georg answers him, looking only at me. “Plus, I owed her—Luna was the one that pulled me from the harbor that night with Jett. I never thought…Sephie. You know I’d never deliberately put Carly in harm’s way.”

  I just stand there, feeling sick. So, Luna was in on all of it. As one of the alphas, I knew she had to be, but hearing it confirmed…shit. My head feels like it’s splitt
ing in two, torn between raw fear and growing fury. How dare she. No matter what went down with her father and my mother, laying hands on my sister is beyond the fucking pale.

  I believe Georg about not knowing what the pack was up to, but I don’t want excuses right now. There’s only one thing I want to hear. “Will you help us find her?”

  In answer, he turns back to the forest and roars. And I do mean roars. All around us the pines shed their coat of winter white in a flurry of sparkles as the sound ripples over the forested hills. Georg’s shoulders ripple, too, the broad expanse of naked muscle bursting apart into thick golden brown fur, and growing even wider and taller. Jack stands his ground, but pulls me in closer. When the shift is complete, Georg is at least nine feet tall and almost half that wide.

  Two other bears are rambling down from the dark tree line now, both reddish in color. The twins. They catch up to an enormous black—Stephen—already halfway down the hill. Seeing them eases some of the panic in my chest. I’ve known all of them since I was a child. This is their territory; if the wolves are still here, the bruins will find them.

  I clench Carly’s blood-stained scarf in my hands and shudder. Jack brushes his lips over the top of my head. It’s wrong how comforting that feels, but I can’t protect myself from Jack right now. All the energy I have has to be put into finding Sy and Carly.

  The bruins race forward. Jack ignores the Fiat, tucking me against his side to join them.

  Georg and his crew are far from slow, lumbering creatures. Normal bears are plenty quick when they want to be, and shifters are even quicker. Though of course none of them can beat Jack in a hurry. Even though he tones it down for my sake, we are neck and neck with Georg in seconds. One of my palms is pressed flat against Jack’s chest. I can feel the steady pump of his heart as he runs. There’s only the slightest increase in beats, even as trees, fields and farmhouses start to flash past in a vertigo-inducing haze. Great swirling slices of white and grey, green and brown. Forest quickly overtakes all.

  We finally stop on a bluff overlooking a long empty beach. Or almost empty. At the far end, I can see figures milling in the bright light of the full moon. Some upright and slender, others husky and low to the ground. Whines and snuffles reach my ears, faint over the lapping of dark water against ice and rock.

  The wolves.

  23

  “Before we do this, I need to speak to Seph for a minute—alone.”

  To my surprise, Jack doesn’t protest Georg’s low command. He just steps away, giving a short nod, before turning back to Rochie, who showed up at one word from Jack, but pretended she hadn’t seen me in years. I went with it, because honestly, I don’t give a shit about one fairy and her secrets at this point. Stephen is huddled with them, in human form at the moment, going over the strategy we agreed on one last time. The two redheads are already gone, moving into place. Rochie will join them shortly.

  We’ve established the bones of a plan. The bruins say Syana is down there on the beach, with over a dozen wolves. Rochie is going in to help Ajax and Dominic grab her while the rest of us keep Owen and the bulk of the pack’s attention. Once the redheads have Sy, they’ll let Georg know—the bruin way, via mind speak.

  No one is sure where Carly is. Ajax, who did the recon along with Dominic and supposedly has the best nose of the bruins, took her scent from the scarf. He admitted that he smelled her, but her trail disappeared at the water’s edge, somewhere well behind the wolves’ current position.

  Jack and Georg almost took his head off for telling me that, but I appreciated the honesty. It makes for a nice change—even if it made me even sicker with worry for my sister. I keep telling myself that Carly is a fully realized witch, and it’d take more than drowning to do her in. I have to put my sister out of my mind; Syana is definitely the more fragile here. We’ll get her free—then we’ll find out where the hell Carly is. I will myself to believe it’ll work out as I follow Georg through moonlit night.

  He leads me into a copse of snow-drenched pine just a few feet off. It’s so cold out here; dark, quiet and peaceful. But my heart hasn’t stopped pounding since Thomas’s text.

  “You do believe me, right?”

  I do. It’s hard to accept Luna pulled this shit, and I can tell Georg doesn’t want to either, but neither of us can ignore the obvious. Goddamn you, sunshine.

  “Of course I do. I know you’d never put Carly in harm’s way—or Sy for that matter.”

  Those brown eyes crinkle around the edges briefly, then tighten again. He takes a deep breath.

  “This isn’t about your sister or Syana.”

  “I know. Jack told me everything.”

  “I highly doubt that SOB told you everything,” he bites out, “but the wolves mean to kill you, and they’re not the only ones.”

  Georg obviously expects more of a response to this, but I’m too busy pondering something that just hit me. “Exactly how long have you known about this bullshit, Georg?”

  His smile is faintly bitter. “I got the head’s up you could be in serious danger last summer. Right around the Fourth of July.”

  The day before he got down on one knee. “Who told you?”

  He shakes his head. “Can’t tell you that, sorry.”

  Of course not. “I don’t fucking believe your sneaky bruin ass! Your whole proposal thing was just a way to try and protect me, wasn’t it?”

  He smiles for real this time, all white teeth and charm, deepening the dimple in his chin. “I’m not quite that altruistic, Sephie. I think being married to you would come with a lot of perks. But I might’ve been a little less…insistent if I hadn’t been so worried.”

  “Why not just tell me what was going on?” Fucking alpha males. After years around women, I’m surrounded by testosterone. It’s threatening to choke me.

  “I didn’t want you to know about this crap.” For the first time he looks uncomfortable …and angry. “Inside the Den, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “So you planned to keep me in a cage?”

  His mouth tightens. “Better a cage than death.”

  “Sure about that, are you? What if it were you being imprisoned?”

  “Is that what I am, Seph? A prison?” His tone is light, but I can feel the pain beneath it.

  “Dammit, Georg. Of course not.” I look at him and memories pound at me. Georg laughing at me from the tree in our back yard when we were kids, the two of us swimming naked in the big lake many years later, freezing our asses off, but laughing like a couple of loons before coming together after and warming up…

  Georg has been in my life a long damn time, longer than Jack. Always there. Annoying me, making me happy and pissing me off. I can see his face in a thousand different memories that make me smile. “I love you, you idiot. Just not…”

  “Not like him, eh?”

  I shake my head, unable to speak.

  Georg looks at me, and his brown eyes are sad. “I don’t want you hurt. And he’ll hurt you, Seph.”

  “It’s what he does.” I give him a weak smile. “I’m almost used to it by now.”

  He looks like he wants to say more, but instead Georg takes a deep breath and offers me his arm. As we head back to the others, I have to ask. “Do you believe it, about the crowns and all, about me going psycho?”

  “Shit, no. I mean, the magic bit—maybe. But you causing some form of hell on earth or whatever? No way. You’re a lot of things, Seph, but wicked witch isn’t your style. Doesn’t matter what I think, though. Not when so many hard-asses think otherwise. The Dark Council, for fuck’s sake. Even if you had married me, I don’t know if I could have kept you safe—not anymore. Shit is really hitting the fan.”

  He won’t look at me, but I can see his eyes glittering as he peers down at the lake below.

  Impulsively, I go to my toes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Georg. For at least having a reason for being such a bastard. Even if it was a bullshit one.”

  He manages a wink, but I see him swal
low.

  “And thanks for helping us out here. I know you made an oath to the wolves.” Georg is risking a lot by standing with us, but I know him too well to expect anything less.

  “Fuck my oath. Carly must be so scared,” he breathes, almost to himself as his eyes go back over the water.

  “Carly isn’t weak. She’ll be fine.” I say this to bolster my own failing spirits, but Georg gives me a look.

  “She also isn’t you, Persephone.” There’s a tone in his voice that I can’t place, but that feels almost like an accusation. I blink at him and he sighs, patting my hand on his arm with one big paw.

  “Never mind, I’m just worried. You’re right, she’ll be fine,” his voices hardens, “but those wolves aren’t gonna be.”

  “No,” I say as we head back, glad Georg and I are in agreement about one thing. “They won’t.” The pack is gonna pay for messing with my family. And by the Horned One, if Luna is down there….

  Well, I don’t want to think of what might happen if my childhood friend and I run into each other tonight.

  Jack looks over at Georg when we step back into the glade. “Your little heart-to-heart over already?” I’m taken aback at the venom in his voice, but Georg is unfazed.

  “You should try it sometime, Frost.” He gives Jack a thin smile, then turns his eyes to Stephen. “We set?”

  Stephen nods. The moonlight catches his face, and for the first time I notice the dark circles under those baby blues. The black bear doesn’t look so good. Georg seems to agree with my assessment.

  “You up for this, brother?” he says in a soft voice, his big hand clasping his second’s shoulder. I wonder what is going on there and whether it has anything to do with Jett’s sudden absence. But I’m not given time to ponder Stephen’s woes. He only nods shortly, leaning into Georg’s hard squeeze briefly, before trudging back into the trees.

  Time to do this.

  24

  Yips and whines grow louder, distinct over the biting wind as we approach the water. Jack and I have barely stepped onto the beach before we are surrounded. No one touches us, but we are effectively herded by the thickly circling mass of bodies. The smell of damp fur and the low rumble of growls are everywhere. Owen is one of the few still in human form. He’s wearing a hoodie that leaves his face in blackness but I catch the gleam of a smug smile when he sees me. It’s the smile of a man who knows he has the upper hand. I hate seeing it on this bastard’s face. His smile vanishes when he notices Jack, but only for a moment.